Lecture Overview

  1. Background Review

  2. Emerging Challenges

  3. Moving Forward

Background Review

Background Review

Four primary “pillars” of the international order

  1. Sovereignty

  2. Collective Security

  3. Bretton Woods System

  4. Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy

These things are based on and implemented using

  • Liberal values

  • Multilateral cooperation

  • US Hegemony

Background Review

Key Institutions

  • United Nations

  • General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (World Trade Organization)

  • International Monetary Fund

  • World Bank

  • North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Emerging Challenges

Emerging Challenges

What are the issues?

  • (Bad) Non-state actors

  • Nuclear proliferation

  • Biological weapons

  • Cyberattacks

  • Revisionist powers (e.g. China, Russia, etc.)

  • Global health and pandemics

  • Climate change and environmental degradation

  • Populist movements

  • Political and economic instability

Moving Forward

Moving Forward

So what’s to be done?

  • Lots of different issues, but there are also lots of common themes and characteristics

  • The work is increasingly interconnected, and so externalities from human behavior (both positive and negative) are increasingly visible

  • People have shared interests in solving these problems

  • Most human interaction is, in fact, benign/cooperative

Moving Forward

So what are some of these common themes/frameworks?

  • Collective action

  • Cooperation and coordination (think about rules and incentive structures)

  • Bargaining (think about people’s interests and what’s possible)

Factors that shape or affect the specifics of these frameworks

  • Actors: Who are the relevant players?

  • Interests: What do the players want? What do they value?

  • Institutions: What are the prevailing rules (formal or informal) that govern actors’ behavior?

Moving Forward

What’s Changed/Changing?

  • The world is more interconnected than ever before

  • Demographic and political changes affect opportunities for cooperation and conflict

  • Political parties, ideology, age, income, etc., all affect people’s interests and values

  • Influence of various groups is not constant

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 2023.

Moving Forward

Why does this matter?

  • Do you pursue policies just because they’re popular abroad?

  • What are the implications of these attitudes for international cooperation?

  • How do international actors affect the ability of the US to pursue its own interests?

  • Issue linkage

    • Trade
    • Investment
    • Military basing
    • Climate change
    • Pandemic response
    • Counter-terror operations
    • Anti-piracy operations
    • Peace and stability operations

Moving Forward

Other tips:

  • Most of the things we care about are caused by lots of other different things (complex systems)…

  • …But not everything has the same amount of causal influence/importance

  • Most of the causal relationships that we care about are probabilistic—not deterministic (i.e. more or less likely)

  • Be cautious when comparing what seem like apples to other apples